Research Engineer - Speech Recognition / ASR

Research Engineer – Speech Recognition - Build the Future of Voice

Are you tired of working on the same cloud-heavy, API-calling pipelines? Want to actually build something fundamental - tech that runs everywhere and values privacy and speed?

This is a chance to shape voice and speech recognition at the early stage for products across many tech for good sectors. Pushing what’s capable in ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and beyond. No wrappers, no Big Tech middlemen - just real infrastructure for real devices taking huge ownership in a successful start-up.

We’re looking for a hands-on, “I’ll-build-it-myself” ASR Research Engineer to help us shape the backbone of voice tech for a privacy-conscious world. You’ll have a say in both stack and strategy. Like to ship fast, iterate faster, and see code in production in days? You’ll fit right in.

What You’ll Actually Do

• Take ownership of the SDK stack - API designing all the way to deploying models on all sorts of hardware
• Train, optimize, and deploy speech / NLU / dialog models
• Major impact from day 1: this code ships now, not “someday”
• Big say in tech, big say in company (want to manage down the line? Or just go technically deep? Both work here)

Who’s Going to do Well

• Obsessed with ASR, NLU, NLP, dialog systems—you’ve built production systems and lived to talk about it
• You’re the engine behind ML models - building, launching, fine-tuning and constantly iterating
• You make fast, real-world decisions
• You want technical ownership and founder-level impact (plus founder-level equity)

Requirements

• Background in Speech Recognition, Voice and Machine Learning
• Strong academics with focus on ASR / Speech Recognition. Publications a plus
• You’ve used the likes of TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kaldi, done end-to-end ASR
• Programming with Python
• Bonus points for build systems, BLAS, Android/iOS, Obj-C/Java/ C++ experience

Why You’ll Love It

• Founding engineer equity + great comp ($150k-$180k)
• Hybrid working in San Francisco
• You own the most critical tech - nobody breathing down your neck
• No red tape, just smart people who care about impact
• Building the voice stack the world actually needs

Sound like your next adventure? Let’s chat. Confidential, no pressure. Get in touch for more information.